Being and becoming through Facebook: morality, sociality, and reflection among young Turkish‐American Muslim women

Abstract

AbstractRecent debates in the anthropology of Islam have centred on the relationship between ‘everyday Islam’ and ‘piety’. Some scholars have posited that these are two opposing theoretical poles, while others have described how religion permeates the everyday. I add to these debates by describing how, for one group of young Turkish‐American Muslim women in a piety movement, the everyday permeates religion. Specifically, my ethnography shows that the ‘everyday’, constructed as a site of struggle and reflection, is seen as at the core of being and becoming a Muslim. Their diverse and shifting responses to the ethical dilemma of how to emulate the Prophet's vefa (loyalty) after moving away from one another – specifically whether to engage with Facebook for this reason – show how piety and the everyday, and the sacred and the secular, infuse one another in complex ways in their moral projects, and hence how what is considered normative and pious need not be static and homogeneous.